


What dreams may come?

by weakinteraction



Category: Marvel 616, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 13:06:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5164913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Squirrel Girl finds herself trapped with Nancy in a phantasmagoric dreamscape.  Guest starring Doctor Strange!</p>
            </blockquote>





	What dreams may come?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VanaTuivana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanaTuivana/gifts).



Nancy locked eyes with the professor. There was some reason their regular professor wasn't there, but she couldn't quite remember the details. It didn't make much difference since this was the midterm session anyway. Above his head was a clock, ticking round to the half hour. She and the other students were spread out around the semicircular lecture theatre, ready to begin the exam.

Without looking round, the professor somehow knew when the second hand reached the top of the clock. "You may begin."

She turned over the paper.

_Discuss the conditions required for successful implementation of parallel processing. In your answer, you should consider hardware factors, including connections between processor nodes in terms of both latency and bandwidth, and storage, and software factors such as optimisation, and give examples of both tasks which are easy to parallelise and those which are more challenging._

Had they studied this? Nancy didn't remember studying this. And she knew she was conscientious, reading ahead each week and always completing the assignments on time. OK, so _sometimes_ she drew Cat Thor comics, but only when the rest of the class were taking a really long time to get their heads round something really obvious, asking repetitive questions that they'd already heard the answers to.

She looked up at the professor again. He looked quite scary; she didn't think she'd dare draw Cat Thor if he was lecturing.

Oh, man. What if this new guy had given them the wrong midterm? That would make a lot of sense. Maybe this paper was for the 203 class who were in here next.

Her left arm started to inch upwards, ready to ask for clarification. On the other hand, no one else around her seemed fazed, all scribbling away on their papers. Could she really have missed an entire topic somehow? Maybe she should check.

She hissed very quietly to Doreen on her right, "Hey." Doreen turned round to her, eyes wide in horror and bushy tail pricked up. Nancy tried to head off the inevitable Squirrel Girl moral lecture about cheating on midterms by quickly saying, "I don't think we've covered this."

Doreen looked down at her paper. "Man, I have this dream all the time. I'm kind of sick of it."

Nancy was nonplussed. "This is a dream?"

"I think that's why I'm naked," Doreen said.

"Oh, right," Nancy said. "I hadn't noticed."

"Dream logic's like that," Doreen said.

"Heh, yeah." Nancy hoped it wasn't obvious that Doreen being naked wasn't exactly uncommon in her dreams either.

"I mean, I hope I wouldn't turn up to a real midterm without clothes on."

"What, because of your secret identity?" Nancy said, nodding at Doreen's tail.

"No, you know, just for the regular reasons."

"But if you're dreaming, am I just part of your dream?"

"I guess so."

"But I don't feel like I'm just part of your dream."

"Huh. Maybe I'm part of your dream."

"Do you feel like part of my dream?"

"No, I feel like I must be dreaming. Maybe you're a very complicated part of my dream."

"Maybe we're dreaming we're each other?"

"I'm starting to lose track of which of us I am."

"Ladies! If you've quite finished."

Nancy and Doreen both turned to look at the professor. Nancy's eyes slid past him to the board where he had written his name: "Professor Nightmare."

"Oh, wait, a clue!" Doreen said.

"I know!" Nancy said. "He's called--"

"The paper is about parallel computing. What if we're _both_ dreaming? Our brains linked together--"

"Like two processor nodes in a parallel computer!" Nancy finished. "That almost makes sense. In a dream logic sort of a way."

Professor Nightmare coughed loudly. When they turned to look at him again, his face had twisted, become almost demonic. "As I was saying ... Welcome to my domain."

Doreen stood up wearily. "I suppose we're going to have to fight?" She took out a stack of cards and started leafing through them. "Oh, man, my Deadpool cards are all blank."

Nancy suppressed a giggle. "You have nightmares about that?"

"No, I'm fairly sure it's just that I don't actually know what's on them off by heart."

Nightmare coughed for attention, and behind him twisting tendrils of dark smoke began to appear. "You seek to fight me?"

"Well, no; it's just starting to seem pretty inevitable."

"Here within my own realms, I cannot be defeated by mortal hand," Nightmare said.

"But what about mortal _foot_?" Doreen said, as she launched herself towards him with a full body kick.

"No, not those either," Nightmare said, shrugging off the blow. Doreen quickly picked herself up again. "And now, I sentence you to ... your own worst nightmares."

The smoke writhing around him billowed outwards and enveloped them both.

* * *

Mew was becoming concerned. The Invisible Sky Cat had batted the big shiny yellow ball almost a third of the way around the sky, but Chief Tummy Scratcher and the recently installed Deputy Tummy Scratcher with Special Responsibility for Ear Scritches were both still asleep. She had tried pawing at them, then loud mewling in their ears, and even lightly using her claws on Chief Tummy Scratcher's cheek. Things were getting serious. If neither of them woke up soon, who was going to open her food?

There was a knocking at the window; it took Mew a moment to realise it was Tippy-Toe, Deputy Tummy Scratcher's squirrel. Tippy-Toe seemed to be able to work some human machinery; maybe she could open cans. Mew jumped up on to the windowsill and pressed hard against the slider. Once it was open a crack, Tippytoe dug her paws into the side and pushed it open far enough to jump inside.

Mew meowed at the squirrel, but she couldn't be sure she understood. Tippy-Toe jumped down to Deputy Tummy Scratcher, and peeled her eyelid back with a paw. Then she jumped over to the table between the two beds, where the candle that had been burning all night still let out its pungent aroma, sniffing at a few times. Mew kept trying to draw Tippy-Toe's attention to the unopened cans of food under the sink, but she didn't seem to be able to take the hint.

Great; now the squirrel was playing with Deputy Tummy Scratcher's shiny flat thing. _So_ easily distracted. Didn't she understand? Mew was _hungry_.

* * *

It wasn't waking up, not exactly. But some part of Nancy knew that she hadn't been here a moment ago, even as the world around her started to make more and more sense: she was standing under a large tree in Central Park. Something was _wrong_ , but she wasn't quite sure what. The memories shifted around, elusive. Hadn't she been with Doreen?

She called out for her. "Doreen?"

Doreen stopped walking away and turned round. She was dressed in her regular clothes. "Nancy, I really don't think there's anything more to talk about. It's OK, I can go back to staying at Avengers Mansion. I'll keep paying my rent. You don't need to--"

"Doreen!" Nancy's heart was twisting in her chest.

"I'm sorry, Nancy," Doreen said. "I just ... don't feel the same way." She turned and walked away.

Nancy sat down on the bench, put her head in her hands, and began to sob. What a fool she had been to open up to her. A life lived in the quiet despair of an unobtainable crush was surely better than this wrenching wound of knowing that nothing would ever come of it.

"Nancy!" She looked up and there was Doreen, dressed in her Squirrel Girl outfit.

"But ... you just left," Nancy said. She sniffed back her tears. What on earth was going on?

"I did?" She looked as confused as Nancy felt. "Nancy, what's wrong?"

"I don't know," Nancy said. "You-- I--"

"Nancy, listen, this is important. Do you have a nightmare with me in it?"

Of course she dreamed about this happening. That was why she should have known better than to say anything in reality.

She should have known better; this wasn't reality. "I'm dreaming?" she said.

"Yes!" Doreen said. "There was this dude, Professor Nightmare ... well, I guess he's just Nightmare, the Professor bit was because we were dreaming about a midterm. Do you remember that?"

"Parallel processing ..." Nancy said slowly, the memories stirring somewhere at the back of her mind.

"I think he's trapped us inside our own bad dreams, or something."

"So why are you here? This isn't your dream, is it?"

"I'm not sure. You were dreaming about me ... Maybe that let me in."

Nancy suddenly felt glad that it wasn't the other sort of dream she had about Doreen that had enabled this to happen. Then again, those weren't nightmares.

"What were you dreaming about, anyway?" Doreen asked.

"It's not important," Nancy said quickly. "We need to work out how to get out of here."

"This is all happening inside our minds, right?" Doreen said. "So we should be able to control it."

"Should we? How would we even start?"

"If we ... concentrate ... really ... concentrate ..." Doreen was squishing her face up with mental effort. It was adorable, but nothing much seemed to be happening. She gave up. "Maybe it doesn't work because this is your dream, not mine."

"Do I have to make the silly face?" Nancy asked. "What should I even try and do?"

"Something small, to start with," Doreen suggested. "Make the flowers on this tree change colour."

Nancy looked up and imagined the flowers on the tree turning from blue to pink ... but of course they had always been pink; what had made her think that they had ever been blue? "I think I might have just done it," she said.

"Great," said Doreen. "Now let's try--"

She was interrupted by a bolt of energy flying through the air between them, hitting the tree and making it burst into flames. Nancy turned round to see an entire battalion of giant robots shooting laser beams from their eyes. They were the exact ones from a cartoon she'd seen as a kid that had given her nightmares for weeks.

"Nightmare must be sending more nightmares!" Nancy said as they started running. "And that sounded better in my head!"

They ducked and weaved through the laser bolts, skidding their way around Central Park. Suddenly, as they turned a corner, a giant mouse loomed towards them, whiskers twitching and tail swishing behind it.

"It's not real," Doreen reminded Nancy. "Also, you have some very strange nightmares."

"Mice are scary!"

"Oh, I know!" Doreen said. "Mew! Mew hunts mice, right? Imagine Mew dealing with it!"

A giant white paw suddenly scooped down out of the sky and took the mouse away.

"Hey, I think I'm getting the hang of this," Nancy said.

Behind where the mouse had been, there seemed to be ... nothing at all, just pure blinding white. Doreen was looking at it thoughtfully. "Nancy, do you trust me?"

Nancy nodded. "Of course."

"Well, then, here goes nothing," Doreen said, and scooped Nancy up in her arms. It was all too easy to forget Doreen's squirrel-proportionate super strength.

Suddenly, she was flying through the air as Doreen took a huge jump into the nothingness.

* * *

Tippy-Toe @yoitstippytoe

@The_Doctor_Is_In chtt chttt kuk chttt chtt CHIIIIIIIIITTTT

Wong got up from the computer immediately. Quite why Stephen wanted his feed checked quite so regularly, especially when the Orb of Agamotto should alert him to any mystical threat anywhere on the planet, Wong wasn't quite sure. Surely the Sorceror Supreme was above being interested in how many followers he had, or whether he was trending. But when a message like this came through, the wisdom of the policy revealed itself.

Wong made his way to the sanctum sanctorum. It looked as though Stephen was hanging from the ceiling again, but then he realised that the cloak of levitation sat unused on the coatstand; it was simply that the geometry of the room had become twisted during Stephen's meditations: within the space of a few feet, up and down, left and right, all became reversed. Wong followed a spiral path to Stephen by walking straight ahead at all times.

He tapped Stephen on the shoulder and whispered in his ear. The room quickly untwisted itself and, stopping only to collect a few essentials, they headed for Empire State University.

* * *

Their flight up into the white void couldn't have lasted more than a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity to Nancy. If it weren't for the dire situation, she could almost have enjoyed being swept up in Doreen's arms like this.

They landed somewhere dark and cold. Gradually, Nancy's eyes adjusted -- at least, that's what it felt like, she assumed her real eyes were still closed, if she was dreaming -- and she was able to make out something of the environment. It felt as though they were in an alleyway between two low, squat buildings. "Where are we?"

"Wherever you keep your nightmares, I guess," Doreen said. "Hey, try imagining a flashlight. Then we might be able to see more."

Nancy concentrated for a moment and a flashlight appeared in her hand. She tried not to be too weirded out as she turned out and cast its beam around them. The low buildings seemed to have large silver-coloured buttresses along their sides. There was something naggingly familiar about them, but the scale was all wrong somehow.

Doreen got there a moment before her. "Hey, these are giant computer chips. Or regular sized computer chips and we're tiny, I guess. Is this how you visualise your own brain?"

"It's not a crime to study something you're really passionate about," Nancy said.

"You're studying Computer Science and your brain actually is a computer! That's awesome!" Doreen said. "Oh, wait, are you an android? Have you been hiding your androidiness from me all this time, even as I opened up to you about my superheroics?"

"I'm not an android," Nancy said. "And you didn't 'open up to me', I figured it out all by myself."

"If I'd wanted to fool you, I could have," Doreen said. "I could have got one of my Avengers friends to pretend to be Squirrel Girl while you were talking to me, and you would have realised that plain old Doreen Green really was just plain old Doreen Green."

Nancy put her hands on her hips. "That wouldn't have worked."

"It totally would. I dress up as other superheroes all the time to help them out with that sort of thing. Anyway, if you are an android I won't judge. Androids are cool."

"I'm not an android!" Nancy said again. "All this is just a ... metaphor or something." She carried on looking around, shining the flashlight this way and that. Parked at the end of the valley between the chips was a perfectly normal, if entirely out of place, New York bus, white with a blue stripe down the side. "OK, that's weird. Why is there a bus here?"

"A serial bus or a parallel bus?" Doreen asked as she wandered over to one of the buttresses that were really pins, and reached out to touch it. When she did, a small screen lit up on the side of the chip and showed a scene from one of Nancy's nightmares. Doreen took her hand away quickly and it vanished.

"No, I mean, a public transportation bus," Nancy said.

"Huh?" Doreen said, and came over to see what she was talking about. 

They walked over to the bus and looked all around it. It continued to seem perfectly normal, except that the destination board on the front said "Doreen Green". "Well," Doreen said, "a bus does connect different devices together. If our brains are linked--" She stepped towards the doors and they hissed open. The driver was a vague shape at the wheel.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Nancy asked. "It could be a trap." On the other hand, there didn't seem to be much they could do to fix their situation wandering up and down between computer chips.

"It could," Doreen said, "but I have an idea. Come on." She stretched out her hand.

Nancy gripped it firmly, and Doreen pulled her on board.

* * *

Mew had still had no luck getting Tippy-Toe to open some food, but the squirrel had become much less agitated and now seemed to be waiting quietly by the door. Mew looked at the window, still open from where she had let Tippy-Toe in earlier, and contemplated jumping out to go hunting. But hunting was hard work, and the food in the cupboard was delicious; Chief Tummy Scratcher seemed to have a good understanding of which brands were preferable, even if she didn't eat them herself. She'd give it until the sky ball was right at the top, she decided, but then she would have to take matters into her own hands.

Suddenly, the door burst open and two humans walked in. The one who came in first was dressed all in green, but Mew was much less interested in him than his friend's red cloak which flapped around him as he walked in. She followed him as he walked around the room, first checking on the two sleeping humans and then sniffing at the candle the same way Tippy-Toe had, trying to play with the tails of the cloak as they swished along, somehow hovering above the floor. The human turned and looked at her for just a moment, before the other human scooped her up and deposited her in the corner. She growled her displeasure.

The two new humans talked to each other for a moment, and then the one with the red cloak's voice changed, becoming deep and sonorous. He talked for some time; Mew was briefly interested when she heard something about "the Moons of Mew-nipoor", but this didn't turn out to presage any new interest in getting her some food. She watched with mild curiosity as the air in the middle of the room rippled and pulsed, before a swirling vortex appeared. The red cloak man spoke normally one last time to his companion, before striding through. Just as he was entering it, Tippy-Toe jumped on his shoulder. They disappeared, leaving Mew alone with the other one.

His friend gone, the other one looked around the room. He locked the door, then picked her up and asked, "Now, kitty, where do they keep your food?"

_Finally._

* * *

The bus ride was bumpy, to say the least, and there was one particularly large jolt that Nancy assumed was the transition between her brain and Doreen's, but pretty soon it juddered to a halt and they got out to explore their new surroundings. When she turned back around, the bus had disappeared. Maybe it fitted into the metaphor of whatever this place was even less well than it had into her computer-chip brain.

It took Nancy a moment to get her bearings. They were inside some sort of dimly lit cavern. No, not a cavern, Nancy realised: the walls were wooden, as though they were inside a giant hollowed-out tree. All around them were small round objects, like crystal balls. Scenes seemed to be playing inside them: Doreen's nightmares, presumably.

Doreen glared at her. "Don't say anything."

"This is a nut store."

"Which part of 'don't say anything' didn't you understand, exactly?"

"Don't worry about it," Nancy said. "My subconscious manifests a computer, yours is ... a nut store. It makes perfect sense. You are Squirrel Girl, after all."

Doreen started picking up the spheres one by one, looking into them, then discarding them.

"What are you looking for?" Nancy asked.

"A dream with my squirrel army," Doreen said. "If I can make them real here, maybe we can deal with Nightmare."

"Do you want me to help? I mean, unless it would be weird."

"I've already seen inside your dreams," Doreen said. She seemed distracted; Nancy wondered exactly what the dreams she was looking at were reminding her of.

She picked up a few spheres herself and soon found out. Each dream seemed to be about a different supervillain, cackling and gloating. Some big hitters too. Was that Thanos? But none of the dreams seemed to have the squirrels in. Maybe that was what made them nightmares.

Then she saw one that was rather different: it didn't feature villains, but rather heroes. Heroes who were ignoring or outright belittling Doreen. She put it aside quickly.

Then there was one with her in it. Nancy almost dropped the sphere in shock. In the nightmare playing out inside the sphere, she was lying in a hospital bed, unconscious and hooked up to all sorts of machinery.

"Any luck?" Doreen said. She came over and saw what was happening in the sphere Nancy was holding. "Oh, that one."

"Er, Doreen, if you don't mind, what's happening here? Why am I unconscious in hospital?"

"This is my nightmare about the people I love being endangered if my secret identity becomes known," Doreen explained. Nancy looked again and realised that there was an entire ward full of people in various dire straits, all of whom she recognised from Doreen's photos as her family or friends. "These are entirely natural fears for a young superhero with animal-based powers in New York City to have, and in no way derivative of any arachnids you may or may not be thinking of right now," Doreen added quickly.

"Riiight," Nancy said. "No squirrel army in that one anyway." She put it to one side and picked up another one. There was a squirrel in this one, but not a whole army; she was about to say something to Doreen when the vision inside the sphere swam out of focus, and suddenly Nightmare's face glared up at her. She dropped it in alarm, and heard a clunk as Doreen did the same. "Did yours ...?" she asked, as they backed up against each other.

"Uh huh," Doreen confirmed.

All the spheres around them cracked open simultaneously, and black smoke billowed forth, obscuring everything from view.

* * *

The mystic realms were like a second home to Doctor Strange, and yet he could never afford to be complacent. Hidden danger lurked around every impossible angle, the true path through the twisted non-Euclidean geometries of the outer worlds difficult to discern, even with his enchanted artefacts to hand.

And the whole thing was so much more difficult, with a squirrel wearing a pink bow on her head chittering on your shoulder the entire time.

* * *

They were back in the lecture theatre again, except that there were no other students, and there wasn't a midterm. Professor Nightmare was pacing back and forth at the front of the room, the chalkboard behind him covered in a diagram that seemed to show how their two brains were linked.

"You've led me on quite a chase. No one's ever escaped from their own nightmares before. I would be impressed if I wasn't so irritated."

"Why do you do all this anyway?" Doreen asked him. He turned to look at her and Nancy was impressed that she didn't quail under his glare. "I'm just saying, you'd do just fine in the mortal world. Lots of people _like_ being scared. Horror movies, Hallowe'en, that sort of thing."

"I tried that," Nightmare said. "'Club Fear.' Didn't work out so well."

"Oh," Doreen said. She sounded deflated; Nancy wondered if a villain had ever before responded to her attempts at persuasion like that. 

Before Doreen could try another line of argument, there was a sudden blinding light in front of them, which turned into a shimmering portal. Through it walked someone who looked a lot like he might be some sort of Sorceror Supreme. The portal winked close behind him.

Nancy couldn't help herself. "Doreen, is that--"

"Yes, Tippy-Toe!" Doreen leaped forwards to pick up the squirrel as it jumped off the cloaked figure; she scurried up her arm and chittered away happily on Doreen's shoulder.

"Nightmare!" the new arrival declaimed.

"Strange," hissed Nightmare, wrapping his cloak around himself.

They stood for some time, stock still, facing off against each other.

Eventually, Nancy said to Doreen, "Are they having a staring contest?"

Doreen shushed her. "Mystical battles take place on a plane beyond our comprehension," she whispered.

"But we're _in_ a plane beyond our comprehension," Nancy said. "There should be blinding lights and mystical energy beams and the Crimson Bands of Cytorrak or the Vapors of Valtorr or something, if they're having a mystical battle." She tilted her head to one side and looked more carefully at the pair. "I really think they're just having a staring contest."

Eventually, Nightmare broke the silence between the two. "Fine," he said. "They're free to go."

"The last time we crossed paths, you swore a solemn oath by the Vishanti not to interfere with the world of mortal men," Doctor Strange said. "You are reckless indeed to break such an undertaking."

Nightmare was indignant. "I was invited!"

"No you weren't!" Doreen said. "I _definitely_ did not invite you into my brain." Nancy made affirmative noises.

"You invoked the Mists of Morpheus," Nightmare said.

Doreen turned to Nancy. "Nancy, did you invoke the Mists of Morpheus?"

"No," she said. "Did you?"

"No," Doreen said. She turned back to Nightmare. "So, you see--"

"Wait a minute," Nancy said. Suddenly, they were all looking at her: Doreen, Tippy-Toe, Doctor Strange and even Nightmare. Waiting expectantly to see what she had to say. She swallowed hard. "Maybe we did."

Doreen's eyes went wide. "The candle!"

"The candle in your dorm, yes," Doctor Strange said. "It was indeed enchanted to bring forth the Mists of Morpheus, which bring unending sleep, which would technically count as an invitation to Nightmare to enter your minds. Had the candle been extinguished, you would have been trapped here in Nightmare's domain forever. Luckily, I have charged Wong with ensuring it remains lit until we return. Which we should do as soon as possible."

"Aren't we going to ... I don't know, kick Nightmare's butt?" Doreen said.

"Since the Mists of Morpheus were involved, he hasn't technically broken his compact with me," Doctor Strange said. "And as a manifestation of a primal facet of human nature, he will always exist as long as there are people to dream. It could even be argued that he serves a useful role within the human psyche."

"That's what I was trying to tell him just before you got here!" Doreen exclaimed. "Plus, he knows that you could kick his butt any day of the week, right?"

"That too," Doctor Strange agreed. Nightmare scowled and disappeared in a puff of black smoke. "I will begin the incantations to open the portal to take us back to your bodies."

Nancy was starting to feel that this was all a bit too easy. "Doreen, wait, what if this is all some complicated trick Nightmare's pulling? He could make us dream that we woke up, and then he really will have trapped us forever. How can we be sure this is really Doctor Strange?"

"Your fears are unfounded," the possibly/probably-fake Doctor Strange said. "But I can reassure you; the Eye of Agamotto reveals truth. I shall turn it on myself and--"

"Nuh-uh. If you're a fake Doctor Strange, it totally stands to reason that you'd have a fake Eye of Agamotto that would let you pass the test."

While they were arguing, Tippy-Toe whispered into Doreen's ear. "It's OK," Doreen said after a moment. "They're real. My subconscious would _never_ have come up with that." She turned to look at Tippy-Toe. "I love you, Tippy-Toe, but sometimes you can be really disgusting."

"So you _are_ the real Doctor Strange?" Nancy said.

"Indeed, yes. I'm sure you have many questions--"

Indeed she did, Nancy thought. But it was obvious which one she should start with. "Have you been to Asgard?"

"Many times," Doctor Strange replied. "As Sorc--"

"I've been to Asgard. It was _amazing_. Is this portal we're going to use to get home like the Bifrost?"

"The arcane rituals of the deathless Vishanti are of a completely different order to Asgardian technomancy--"

"The Bifrost was _really_ cool," Nancy said.

"It's not _entirely_ dissimilar," Doctor Strange said guardedly. "The transition should be perfectly smooth. Just so long as I am not distracted during the incantation," he added, with a slight glare in her direction.

Nancy decided not to ask about whether Heimdall could see things the Eye of Agamotto couldn't.

* * *

As they stepped out of the portal, Nancy realised that her body had suddenly turned ghostly. "Hey!" she said.

"You are in your astral form," Doctor Strange said. "You have been all along, but in Nightmare's realm, you had the illusion of solidity."

"So, what? I just rejoin my body?"

"Indeed," Doctor Strange said.

Nancy and Doreen looked at each other and shrugged. She watched the ghostly Doreen climb onto her own bed and lie down, her two bodies overlapping for a moment before she opened her eyes. Nancy tried to do the same; it felt far more uncomfortable than it should have been able to given how insubstantial she apparently was.

And then, quite suddenly, she was awake again. She would almost have written the whole thing off as a crazy dream if Doctor Strange and his friend hadn't been right there in her dorm.

Doreen came over and helped her get off the bed. They hugged each other tight for a moment. "We made it," Doreen whispered into her ear.

Nancy looked around and saw the half-eaten bowl of cat food. "You fed Mew! Thank you!"

"My pleasure," said Doctor Strange's friend, giving a minuscule bow.

Doctor Strange blew out the candle. Presumably it was safe to do so now that they were both awake. "Wong," he said. "While I was gone, did you observe anything that might have given a clue as to where this candle came from?"

"I'm afraid not, Stephen, my friend."

"But that's easy," Nancy said. "I was given it by that new girl, Theresa. She just moved in down the corridor; she's a transfer student."

"We lit it because it smelled nice," Doreen said, in answer to Doctor Strange's sharp glare in their direction. "We didn't know it was enchanted!"

"I think she needs to answer a few questions," Nancy said, striding out of the door. She was dimly aware of the others following her, of Doreen explaining to Tippy-Toe that she and Mew had to hide from the others as she closed the door on the two of them.

Nancy marched down the corridor and knocked hard on Theresa's door. When there was no answer, she knocked again. She tried the handle but it was locked. Doreen was getting ready to kick the door down when it finally opened. "What do-- You! How are you awake?"

"Ah ha!" said Nancy. "So you admit it!"

"Admit what?"

"Perhaps," said Doctor Strange, "we should do this in private." Several other doors had opened to see what all the noise was about.

"You're--" Theresa said.

"That's right," said Doreen, nodding. "He is."

"Then I suppose you'd better come in," Theresa said, sounding defeated.

When they walked in, they found her room filled with magical paraphenalia, including a pentagram drawn on the floor with candles lit at each corner.

Doctor Strange cast his eyes around quickly. "Were you performing a summoning rite?"

"Maaaay-be," Theresa said.

"Unthinkably dangerous," he said. "Especially in untrained hands."

Theresa bristled. "Who says I'm untrained?"

"Never mind that, why did you put us to sleep?" Doreen asked. "Wait, no, I know that one, you didn't want Squirrel Girl stopping your nefarious plans. But how did you know I was Squirrel Girl?"

"I performed a divination to see whether there was anything which could threaten me," Theresa said. "I supposed I shouldn't have been surprised to find myself living on the same corridor as a superhero. This is New York, after all." She turned to Doctor Strange. "So what happens now? You wipe all knowledge of magic from my mind?"

"Wait, what? You do that?" Nancy said.

"It is often the safest way to ensure ... dabblers in the mystic arts such as this young lady no longer pose a threat to those around them," Doctor Strange said.

"That does seem harsh," Doreen said.

"Why are you sticking up for me? I was happy to sacrifice you to Lord Nightmare! When the candle burned out you would have been trapped in his realm forever."

"Well, when you put it like that ..." Nancy said.

"No," Doreen said. "She deserves a second chance."

"You don't know anything about me!" Theresa said. "I'm bad to the bone!"

"I seriously doubt it," Doreen said. "Besides, I've never had a magical sidekick before. That could be pretty cool." Nancy felt a sudden stab of jealousy, and tried to suppress it. This _was_ just Doreen doing her thing of seeing the good in everyone, wasn't it? That was one of the things Nancy loved about her.

Doctor Strange went all serious. "Squirrel Girl, if I do this at your urging, any future malfeasance on this young lady's part will ultimately be your responsibility. I do not mean that I will seek to hold you to account; I merely warn you that your own conscience will."

Doreen nodded. "If she steps out of line again, you can put the whammy on her." She turned to Theresa. "So if you want to carry on doing magic, you have to do it the right way."

"And I _am_ going to confiscate this," Doctor Strange said, taking a small obsidian pyramid from the table.

"Hey!" Theresa said, before admitting defeat. "OK."

"Good day, ladies," Doctor Strange said, and he and Wong headed out.

"So, who wants ice cream?" Doreen said.

* * *

"I'd better be getting back," Theresa said as she finished her ice cream. "I have _so_ much to catch up on. That was what the summoning was all about, you know. There's this one type of demon that can slow down time, and I just wanted longer to get to grips with all this new material."

Nancy poked her spoon at the melted ice cream in the bottom of her bowl, feeling guilty about feeling bad that Theresa turned out to be so nice. She had transferred to Empire State from California after a minor misunderstanding about certain items in her magical supplies, and did seem keen to make a fresh start. Everyone deserved a second chance, like Doreen had said.

"See you soon," Doreen said as Theresa left.

"Bye!" Nancy added.

"So," Doreen said, taking a big slurp from her milkshake. "I guess we both had things from our nightmares come true, but things worked out OK."

"Huh?"

"Well, you saw my nightmare about my secret identity endangering people. And Theresa found out, and it put you in danger, but everything's fine now."

Nancy took a moment to try and puzzle out what Doreen had said earlier. "You said 'we both'. Is there a giant mouse outside somewhere who's actually really nice?"

"Nancy," Doreen said, putting a cold hand over hers. "I know what that first dream of yours was about. It wasn't hard to figure out, even if I only saw some of it."

"You do?" Nancy suddenly felt her heart racing. "Doreen, listen, it's-- you-- I--"

"Nancy!"

Nancy looked at Doreen. She was smiling. "What?"

"Like I was saying, this _isn't_ your nightmare."

"OK," Nancy said, in between the deep breaths she suddenly found she was having to take.

"This does feel really weird," Doreen said. "I mean, we're already roommates and everything. But ... do you want to go out on a date?"


End file.
